Laayoune - Twelve Sahrawi families benefited, on Friday, from a new family visit flights led by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Under this programme, members of Sahrawi families living in the Moroccan southern provinces visit their relatives in the Tindouf camps in south-western Algeria, and vice-versa.
Thirty five people belonging to six families from the Es-smara province (Morocco's south) embarked Friday morning aboard a UN aircraft at the city's airport bounding for Tindouf, before 38 people from five families landed on the same plane from the Tindouf camps, said a statement of the Moroccan coordination office with the MINURSO.
The operation took place in good conditions and necessary steps have been taken to ensure a warm welcome to the participants in this operation, the statement added.
The new exchange brings the number of people who benefit from the UNHCR-led family visit exchange programme, since the launch of this operation in March 2004, to 10,872, including 5,617 people from the Tindouf camps and 5,255 people from the southern provinces.